Is the lockpicking tree still pretty useless or have the perks been improved?

Its useless for killing people. Useful for easy and better loot.

Which, in this game, is ultimately useless. I can pick master locks with a combat oriented warrior as easily as I can with a thief character. Money/loot is no issue, either.

I just hate picking a master lock then getting 29 gold and some iron boots...yay....

I generally follow the "Fallout 3" rule. You cannot attempt a lockpick for a lock above your skill level. IE, if your lockpicking skill is 30, you cannot pick an Adept level lock. If Skyrim had a "force atttempt" option, you could do that, but at the risk of breaking a lockpick, as well as a low % chance of success.

It's useless to kill people, but it allows you to quickly pick a lock and actually play the game instead of staring at a repetitive minigame

That's why I take Lockpicking. It's the useful useless, instead of Speechcraft, which is useless useful

Lockpicking isn't useless all by itself. It's the ridiculous ease of the mini game that makes it useless. Change the mini game, the tree will be useful.

My characters can only pick locks based on perk level.

Before I allow my character to pick novice locks he must first have the novice lockpicking perk.

This is ultimately how the developers should have implemented it, but I have no problems doing it myself.

I'm kinda split about it. I don't take the perks as I do have more important things to use them on, but I certainly wouldn't mind them. I do agree, picking a master lock for something worth less than the broken picks is annoying, but its not like theres ever a shortage of them, even for a new character if they exercise some caution with them.

It is useful and useless at the same time.

Useful when your want better loot and less time consuming but it is useless when you know the tricks and able to unlock any leveled lock without perk.

I still believe it is better way to combine lock picking and pick pocket, take away some perks and make another combat skill set to stealth. Also make lock breaks on couple failure attempt without a proper lock picking perk level. So you will need to invest into lock picking perks mastery.

More skill set I prefer dagger or unarm mastery for combat or some skill set to conceal yourself into environment . Like dress up in guard's wear and everyone recognize you a guard.

I heard one MQ supposedly had this: a Thalmor robe supposedly makes you look like a Thalmor. But I guess it's one of those funny features you get only in specific quests, like special cars in Grand Theft Auto